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[music]

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[Andy Freeberg] I'm here with Rich Vondrak, the Project Scientist for LRO

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and Rich you're going to explain to me a little bit about the LRO spacecraft and tell me what this is gonna do here?

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[Rich Vondrak] Okay

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[Andy] So this is LRO in all it's deployed glory right?

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This kind of square shape is to fit a lot inside right?

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[Rich] That's right, the inside here is a large propulsion tank.

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The LRO spacecraft with fuel weighs about 2 tons

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but the spacecraft without the fuel, before it's fueled, weighs only about one ton.

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So it's like having an automobile where your automobile has as much

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gasoline in it as the whole weight of your car.

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And we need that in order to stay in orbit.

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We also have an adjustable high-gain antenna system

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that's always pointed at the Earth, to take the measurements we make

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and send them back to Earth so that

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they can be analyzed by the scientist on the mission.

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[Andy]  And that can send a lot of data back with this one right here right?

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[Rich] An awful lot of data, much more than any planetary mission has ever returned before.

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[Andy] Okay so how about if I say I'm building my map of the Moon and you explain how you're doing it.  All right so,

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the first thing I'm going to want with a map is I'm going to want pictures.  I'm going to want images of the Moon.

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[Rich] That's right.

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[Andy] So what on LRO is going to be able to do that?

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[Rich] We have a camera system, called the LRO Camera or LROC.

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It has two very high resolution

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cameras so objects that are the size of this table

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or this big, can be detected.

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[Andy] Or maybe a lunar rover for example?

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[Rich]  A lunar rover, we expect that when we go over the Apollo sites we'll be able to

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image the lunar module, the lunar rovers, see the tracks the

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astronauts left as they disturbed the surface.

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[Andy] So now we sort of have some images, but I want to know kind of

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in three dimensions what this looks like.  What am I looking at for sure, is it a hill or is it a valley?

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[Rich] That's right, what we lack now is an accurate

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topographic map of the Moon.  With LRO

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we have a laser altimeter system so every second we'll

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have 140 spots deposited on the surface, it'll measure the return

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with this system and then measure the distance to the surface

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the roughness of the surface, and by looking at the five spots

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together we'll know the tilt of the surface.

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[Andy]  Those are two sort of basic, tangible ones, but you're going to want to know

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temperatures, I think that's a big deal on the Moon right?

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[Rich]  Yes, because the Moon goes through

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large temperature variations, unlike the Earth where our atmosphere

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redistributes the temperature variations

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so that we don't have large temperature variations like you do on the Moon

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Also, some places on the Moon we think are shadowed

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from sunlight, so they get very cold.

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So we want to measure temperatures around the Moon.  To do that we have

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this instrument at the top called the Diviner

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experiment.  By looking at the day/night variations we can understand

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what the surface properties are and understand

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parameters like rock abundance, you know, whether it's a smooth, hard soil

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or whether it's rubbly like gravel.  A surface texture that you cannot see

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with the imager even at 50 centimeters.

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[Andy]  Right so a sandy area, when it goes from day to night, will change temperature differently than a rocky area when it goes from day to night.

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[Rich]  Right.  The heating and cooling runs at different rates depending on the surface characteristics.

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[Andy] Interesting.

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[Rich]  We also have a UV-spectrometer called LAMP.

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And this instrument will use starlight to

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image the dark regions where the Sun doesn't shine.

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And by looking at the reflectivity of

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the starlight and ultraviolet it can tell whether there's water frost on the surface or not.

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[Andy] So that kind of does a lot of the mapping, is there anything in particular

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can you talk about the one we missed that's kind of a more unique type of camera?

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[Rich] Right, we have here at the bottom this large instrument, which is

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the neutron detector.  It's call LEND,

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for Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector, and it's being

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supplied by Russia and in regions where we think there is water

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the hydrogen associated with the water will

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cause the neutron flux to decrease.  So LEND will

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search for these regions where there's decreased neutron flux

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in order to measure hydrogen abundance.

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[Andy] So we're missing one big one, this whole big brown thing right here.

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Can you explain to me what that is?

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[Rich]  Yeah, that one was added late in the mission.

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And what it is an advanced radar system.  What this system

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will do, it will send radio waves to the surface and measure the reflection

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of the surface in radio waves and it uses several

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techniques to see if there's the signature, first of all of surface roughness,

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and then also to see if there's some unique signatures associated with buried water ice.

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on the lunar surface.

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[Andy]  All right, well thank you very much for showing this to me, we'll look forward to

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seeing what it starts sending back once we get it into orbit.